gregghoush wrote:Yes, but in another post it states clearly that you did extensive A/B testing before launching this. Having done this for more than 20 years now, I just can't believe that. Extensive A/B testing, stressing the extensive, would have quite clearly shown that this new design is completely unusable. I have run A/B tests on sites with 100,000 uniques a week, and sites with 1,000,000 uniques an hour. This design would not have made it out of any test I ever did. So you are trying to sell us something that just doesn't add up. That is one of the big reasons its so hard on this side.

Minor fixes and tweaks are not going to solve this. The biggest problems are still that it is "responsive" only in name. I am sitting here on a computer with 3 40+ inch screens (42", 42", 46") and no matter how wide I choose to make the page the Races section doesn't move up next to the news section. That is pretty much one of the most basic responsive designs. Instead of any columns or sections moving around to adjust to my screen size, I get a very thin sliver in the center of the screen, that never changes size.

Now its easy to write me off as an edge case, and with my monitor setup I am one. But the thing I described there is not related to just how much of an edge case my setup is. Because its the same problem on my 15" laptop. My big setup just really lets me see how bad it is.

Cool 1 million uniques an hour, what site was that?

Oddly CYN only is responsive up to 1000px due to advertisement requirements - we are looking at solutions around this as thats not really good enough.

gregghoush wrote:Yes, but in another post it states clearly that you did extensive A/B testing before launching this. Having done this for more than 20 years now, I just can't believe that. Extensive A/B testing, stressing the extensive, would have quite clearly shown that this new design is completely unusable.

I suppose there isn't much more I can say on this. The feedback we've received, and results of testing, show that not all users agree with your statement. Plenty of users are finding the site usable, or at the very least haven't shared those criticisms with us. But that's why we're continuing to get feedback. We're not saying "the results of the A/B test don't match your opinion, so you're wrong". Perhaps the randomised group of users viewing the design during testing were more receptive to this kind of layout, or simply less forthcoming with their criticisms. Whatever the reason, what we are saying is "your opinion is a little different to the results of the A/B test - please tell us more so we can make improvements". Surely that's a positive?

gregghoush wrote:Minor fixes and tweaks are not going to solve this.

Agreed. We're fully prepared to make changes beyond that, but are concerned that rushing into big adjustments so soon after the launch would compound the issue. Design updates are being looked at, discussed and prototyped. We're not limiting ourselves to minor fixes and tweaks at all, but the changes will come out in smaller steps to ensure we're getting feedback and iterating in the right direction.

Armchair cyclist wrote:Fault acknowledged, but nothing done about it. Rather like the failure to do anything about the lack of diacritics in the forum, this does not speak to a high respect for readers.

Yes, fault is acknowledged - you may see the other race has a full report attached now?

This race has no report, Myself and the design team are currently working on a solution to this issue to make it clear what is a report and ones that are just results.

The way it works editorially is that the results get posted straight after the race then the report follows.

samuelimmediate wrote:Yes, fault is acknowledged - you may see the other race has a full report attached now?

This race has no report, Myself and the design team are currently working on a solution to this issue to make it clear what is a report and ones that are just results.

The way it works editorially is that the results get posted straight after the race then the report follows.

Sorry I couldn't get you a solution this week.

It looks like you are trying to find a complicated fix to a very simple problem. For as long as you only have results, label the link as "results". When that is upgraded to a report, change the text on the link to "Report".

If the default is that results precede report (which is logical), then the default template should say results: it is one very brief task for whoever posts the fuller report: deleting 5 letters and typing 4.

How does that require the intervention of a design team? Why should it take any longer than the time taken to type the 5 letters that are different?

cityride23 wrote:I don't see a way to attach the css, so here's a temp fix. You can use a firefox/chrome extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/?src=external-userstyleshome stylish to do a per site css update. The below code works as is for firefox, chrome does not support the: @-moz-document domain(cyclingnews.com) {....} wrapper. This still doesn't fix the jquery slider completely, that's harder to debug but it is a lot better. I'll work on this now and then and see if I can restore cn to a somewhat usable state, and post any updates I do on this for those cycling fans who actually want to read cycling news.

Save this code into a file, call it: cn-fix.css Then save it somewhere on your system, then copy and paste it into stylish by creating a new rule.

Many thanks for this.

I am by no means a programming expert (I was taught a little bit of BASIC in 1980), but I was able to use this, and it is a definite improvement in utility. I did have to make one slight change though: in the opening line, I had to remove the square bracket within the round brackets in the first line:
@-moz-document domain(cyclingnews.com) rather than
@-moz-document domain([cyclingnews.com)

Armchair cyclist wrote:It looks like you are trying to find a complicated fix to a very simple problem. For as long as you only have results, label the link as "results". When that is upgraded to a report, change the text on the link to "Report".

If the default is that results precede report (which is logical), then the default template should say results: it is one very brief task for whoever posts the fuller report: deleting 5 letters and typing 4.

How does that require the intervention of a design team? Why should it take any longer than the time taken to type the 5 letters that are different?

Sledgehammers and nuts don't even come close.

Thanks for your comments, I will keep this in mind - as you may notice that the race pages looks a mess - this is why the design team is looking at it.

samuelimmediate wrote:Yes, fault is acknowledged - you may see the other race has a full report attached now?

This race has no report, Myself and the design team are currently working on a solution to this issue to make it clear what is a report and ones that are just results.

The way it works editorially is that the results get posted straight after the race then the report follows.

Sorry I couldn't get you a solution this week.

Why should we give feedback when nothing changes? The "reports" of the prologue and Stage 2 of Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, a race that started AFTER Armchair cyclist made you aware that links named report simply lists results also only list the results.
The races are a mess as they are not chronologically listed. I for one don't go to your site for race results anymore. Good work.

rote_laterne wrote:Why should we give feedback when nothing changes? The "reports" of the prologue and Stage 2 of Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, a race that started AFTER Armchair cyclist made you aware that links named report simply lists results also only list the results.The races are a mess as they are not chronologically listed. I for one don't go to your site for race results anymore. Good work.

I can only do so much work a week, the site isn't powered by magic pixies.

Using Firefox on a mac, the picture galleries at the top of an article display as full images rather than thumbnails, requiring one to scroll halfway down a page to get to the actual article text. Chrome displays the galleries correctly. At least on the last version of the site I could read the article and look at about half the gallery before it blew up.

To be honest, there are so many issues with the site in Firefox/mac that it's pretty much unusable, like the mobile site on Safari.

And, while I'm at it - the new layout is really, really bad. The quite decent hierarchical structure of the former site is lost, race results are pushed down below the fold, ads are given equal sizing/importance to content, live reports are much harder to read, races aren't listed chronologically... I've been checking cyclingnews daily for more years than I can count, and now I'm looking at other sites much more often.

Don't even get me started on the click-bait "Promoted Stories" garbage at the bottom of every page.

fishtacos wrote:Using Firefox on a mac, the picture galleries at the top of an article display as full images rather than thumbnails, requiring one to scroll halfway down a page to get to the actual article text. Chrome displays the galleries correctly. At least on the last version of the site I could read the article and look at about half the gallery before it blew up.

To be honest, there are so many issues with the site in Firefox/mac that it's pretty much unusable, like the mobile site on Safari.

And, while I'm at it - the new layout is really, really bad. The quite decent hierarchical structure of the former site is lost, race results are pushed down below the fold, ads are given equal sizing/importance to content, live reports are much harder to read, races aren't listed chronologically... I've been checking cyclingnews daily for more years than I can count, and now I'm looking at other sites much more often.

Don't even get me started on the click-bait "Promoted Stories" garbage at the bottom of every page.

Hi, would you mind sending over some screenshots of what you see and your Firefox version number please?

I am by no means a programming expert (I was taught a little bit of BASIC in 1980), but I was able to use this, and it is a definite improvement in utility. I did have to make one slight change though: in the opening line, I had to remove the square bracket within the round brackets in the first line:@-moz-document domain(cyclingnews.com) rather than@-moz-document domain([cyclingnews.com)

If you have chrome, there is a plugin called stylebot.

And here is a custom css for CN that works with it that totally changes the front page. (you need it in conjuction with ad block though)

I have one main complaint about the new design: The headings of the race reports prominently display the winner. I like to be able to read the report (particularly the live report) without knowing the winner in advance. On the whole, I liked the old format better, where race reports and news items appeared in separate columns that could be accessed directly.